Influence Of Pop Culture On America

Pop culture, at least very much so in America, is oftentimes shaped and influenced by many different sources and outlets such as celebrities, issues of that time, conflict between different peoples, other countries, and the list can continue on and on. One influence which has affected much of America’s pop culture today, in which not many are aware of, is of the results from the tension of the fight between“New Canaan” versus “New Israel”. Due to the fight that lasted for decades between the conservative-upper class, those who hoped for a “New Israel”, and the less-religious-lower class, those that hoped for a “New Canaan”, there were compromises that both sides had to make after means of either controlling or resisting the opposing side

This was all according to the efforts of the Victorian Americans, who wanted leisure, pleasure, and misrule to all be contained into the mind and private homes. For example, in The Battle for Christmas, it mentions about the Kris Kringle’s Raree Show and this started based off of a character named “Old Kriss Kringle”, who was an individual very similar to that of what would later be called “St. Nicholas” or “Santa Claus”. Kris Kringle was a character that came out especially for the Christmas time and was for the children’s enjoyment and entertainment. This character later evolved to be a character that appeared in theaters, however, the theater was a rowdy world of its own which displayed carnival (Nissenbaum 126). Because rowdiness and the carnival world was not acceptable and fitting to the “New Israel” ideal, gradually, Kriss Kringle became a character found in the books. The same carnival that was able to be found in theaters was then able to be transferred into the mind at their homes. This allowed those who pursued the “New Canaan” to still have the same experience right in their homes just as they would when out in the streets. As Nissenbaum stated, “Reading is presented here not so much as an attractive alternative to misrule as a mini-version of it, one in which the rowdy

More than the means to resist, I believe that pop culture was most effective as a means to control, especially by looking at how big of an impact the reforms that the elite and religious made, had an impact on shaping pop culture. Resisting did only so much as to prolonging acts or gaining a bit more free space to do what they wanted, however, what the “New Israel” advocates did, in that although they made compromises, they brought order to whatever unorganized or savage activity the working class desired to have in their society. They used the ideas of the people and they transformed it to be favored, or at least accepted, by majority of the elite and religious groups. The focus in which Christmas first started off on was completely altered to be catering to a much larger group of people. Sports and entertainment became orderly and more sophisticated, which allowed particular sports such as boxing to be “acceptable” to society by the majority. All which was contained into the mind, the “carnival of the mind”, people were still able to find their experiences, in which would be found usually out in the streets, without having to violate any laws or rights right in their